Arguments span from accusations that Assange is a terrorist who belongs in jail, to the idea that can free the world from lies and conflict.

Sadly, few seem to argue for the middle path.

Why we need Wikileaks

As the past decade has shown us we do need organizations like Wikileaks. When democratic leaders go to war on false grounds and keep vital information hidden from the public, then, clearly, there is a democratic win in having an organization that can notify the public the way Wikileaks does.

Through its disclosure of classified documents, Wikileaks has given citizens important insights into state secrets and helped fight the trend to over classify government information.

“Wikileaks is enabling people to improve democratic accountability. That’s valuable to a democracy,” says Quint Hendler, staff writer for Columbia Journalism Review.

His opinion is supported by Alexander Hotz, who is Digital Media Associate at Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism:

“Even in the US, sources are not entirely safe from outing or prosecution. Wikileaks provides a leaking platform, which is safe, secure and anonymous. I think that’s nothing short of revolutionary.”

… And a Critical Mindset

Yet it seems that caution and healthy skepticism towards Wikileaks may also be beneficial.

Although a democracy needs someone to blow the whistle on governments, it also needs for people to be critical when an organization, whose main objective is to promote transparency, is itself an extremely closed system.

“We are watching seismic events prompted by information from unknown sources, selected by unknown curators, paid for by unknown funders,” says Anne Nelson, Associate Professor of International and Public Affairs at Columbia University.

Her opinion is supported by Hendler who adds:

“It would be nice if Wikileaks were a better run and more transparent organization. At the moment, there is room for improvement.”

Further querying the methods of Wikileaks is the fact that the organization relies on framing to shape people’s perception of the material it discloses.

An obvious example of this is the military video “Collateral Murder,” disclosed in April, showing soldiers killing civilian Iraqis. Although the video certainly qualified to be a matter of public interest, Wikileaks was criticized for editorializing by adding a value-laden description of the content, focusing on a limited part of the video and giving it a very subjective title.

“It was definitely intended to be viewed in a certain way,” says Hendler. However, he does believe that Wikileaks subsequently toned down the editorializing effort.

Still, the organization does not refrain from giving its own opinion on the documents it releases.

“Much of Assange’s rhetoric suggests that Wikileaks has an agenda. The organization is clearly anti-Iraq war and hostile to US foreign policy. That bias – even if you agree with it – is a reason for skepticism,” warns Hotz.

A Powerful Underdog

The increased influence Wikileaks calls for a more nuanced view of the organization. In addition to being an advocate of openness, Wikileaks is also a gatekeeper because the organization single-handedly chooses what information to publish and how.

According to Nielson this is problematic because Wikileaks does not provide us with the same transparency and fact-checking ability as the press.

“The legal framework and safeguards for the print media have been built up over several hundred years,” she says, “Now the Internet presents us with a ‘Wild West’ where we don’t always understand the long-range implications of rapidly evolving events as they occur,” she says.

“The public shouldn’t trust anything Wikileaks releases as gospel unless the information is fact checked by journalists or academics,” Hotz notes, “To Wikileaks’ credit, nothing it has published has proven false.”

Wikileaks is trying to promote a world with total transparency. However, in its attempt to do so, it reproduces the exact same practices it’s trying to fight: Though promoting transparency, the organization itself is secretive about its operations and to expose governmental manipulation, it relies on editorializing information.

Nevertheless, this does not justify any attempt to prevent Wikileaks from leaking information that can strengthen democracy.

Similarly, the increased power of Wikileaks’ does not reduce our need for the organization. It does, however, highlight the need for us to assess Wikileaks critically.

With the organization’s multiple roles as transparency advocate, gatekeeper and powerful agenda setter, the question arises; who is to blow the whistle on Wikileaks?

Veterans in the mobile money field already know how services like M-PESA or FrontlineSMS: Credit have given formerly unbanked people the ability to save or transfer money and make payments directly over their mobile phones.  But it is both heartening and significant to see the State Department embracing technology in the wake of cablegate.

In fact, the article announces a $12 million (Sh960 million) Youth Innovate for Change Fund that is part of USAID Kenya’s Yes Youth Can! initiative.  The fund seeks to empower young Kenyans to begin community development, environmental and financial system strengthening projects.  In the article, Otero and Ranneberger express their vision of mobile money as a tool for empowering Kenya’s next generation of youth entrepreneurs.

Interestingly, some Kenyans are skeptical of the Youth Innovate for Change Fund.  Another article in the same paper illuminates Kenyan government fears that U.S. efforts to empower youth are truly a disguise for creating anti-government sentiments.  The article goes on to argue that many Kenyan Members of Parliament believe that Mr. Ranneberger’s visits to youth groups and encouragement to become civically active are motived by a desire to prop up new leaders.

I was so surprised to read that the Obama administration (and Obama himself !) called Wikileaks a criminal organization. Logically speaking, if Wikileaks is a criminal organization, then the New York Times, El Pais, Der Spiegel, Le Monde and The Guardian are too (they have been working with criminals) and should be blamed for complicity. Is this relevant or just ludicrous ? The problem here is not WikiLeaks, it is about the “politics of naming” that should force those who lead those policies to be consistent from the beginning to the end. Amateurism…

I was surprised to hear that the US State Department has required all its staff and employees not to read the disclosed documents. Not only does this information sound like a revival of old forms of conscience censorship, but it is also so ridiculous given that the State Department still call those documents “confidential” and “Top Secret”.

I was surprised by French Minister of Telecommunications Eric Besson saying this week-end that he wants to take action to try and block Wikileaks from being hosted by French Server/Host Owni on the Internet. The Internet is so liquid and volatile that any attempt to block a website’s content from being hosted by another website could only be  a waste of time: if Besson succeeds, no wonder then that Wikileaks would always manage to  be hosted by another guy.

Why are our officials so incompetently appointed? The problem here is not WikiLeaks but the lack of though and judgment of some people applying “real life” measures to what should be once and for all understood as a complex new digital age.

I was very surprised to receive an e-mail email from OSA (Office of Students Affairs) sent to SIPA’s entire body warning students not to discuss the wikileaks fiasco in any online forum, lest students interested in pursuing careers within the State Department would put their future in jeopardy. This directive seems odd considering that last year, the head of the State Department’s new e-Diplomacy was talking at SIPA. It was about need-to-share and transparency policies…

My only consolation last week came from T.Friedman’s new Op-Ed in the New York Times. The author wrote a fiction piece called « From Wiki China » where he imagines : « What if China had a WikiLeaker and we could see what its embassy in Washington was reporting about America? ».

A Must Read. Enjoy !

Founded on August 24^th, 2009, M.A.L.I[i] is a group of thirteen Moroccan citizens who present themselves as staunch advocates of individual and civil liberties aiming at fostering the debate on Individual liberties and civil rights in Morocco.

“We all love our country and that’s why we want it to improve in the field of individual liberties”, explains M.A.L.I Co-Founder Betty Lachgar.

The ambitions of M.A.L.Is go beyond words. In fact, M.A.L.I members are rather seeking to organize coup-de-poing happenings to destabilize the country’s most sacred conservatisms and then start the debate.

“ In this respect, we have decided to start a struggle against intolerance, power abuse, socio-religious inquisition and abusive laws” adds Psychoterapist Betty Lachgar.

And that is exactly what they did.

Aware that Islam is the most volcanic taboo in Morocco’s society, M.A.L.Is did not choose provocation deliberately.  What they were bent on doing was to act as the mirror of “the provocative contradictions of Morocco’s social, religious and institutional fabric.”

“We wanted to perform a symbolic act to point out the very contradictions of Morocco’s institutional backdrop. In fact, while Morocco’s constitution guarantees freedom of Worship, article 222 of Morocco’s criminal code still condemns anybody presumably of Muslim belief to a six-month sentence to jail” argues Co-Founder Zineb El Rhazoui, 27.

The Butterfly Effect

At first glance, M.A.L.I appears as one of the million movements locally struggling for the advancement and improvement of individual liberties. So far, so good. Nothing new under the sun.

However, absent social networks, what happened in Morocco on September 13^th, 2009 could have gone totally unnoticed. And that’s what makes M.A.L.I so revolutionary.

The idea is quite simple to understand. Aware that their low weight and high powerlessness as a 13-member group is a disheartening liability, M.A.L.Is have mostly relied on Facebook as a stepping stone to spread over their ideas.

How Could a 13-people picnic in the small city of Mohammedia, Morocco set off a tornado in the highest ranks of Morocco’s authorities, hit the headlines of  Le Monde and El Mundo, and arouse the ire of Human Rights Watch?

At The Beginning Was Facebook.

The conception, description and pubilicity of the un-fasting happening all started on M.A.L.I’s Facebook page.

What first started as a mild and cordial discussion about religion and society evolved to a more and more tensed, aggressive and sometimes violent exchange between those who supported the initiative and those who condemned it with the utmost vehemence.

Choosing to compare the insignificance of the incident itself with the huge consequences it had and still has as the yardstick by which the success of the operation should be assessed, one would doubtlessly call it a success. Let’s have a look.

The Media

On the local level, the story hit the headlines of all daily and weekly news magazines such as Tel Quel: “They Did It!”

On the international level, Spanish Newspaper EL Mundo’s headline best encapsulated the discrepancy between the incident and its irrational consequences: “In Morocco, 100 Policemen against 10 Sandwiches”.

NGOs

“We should not, in the name of our Muslim heritage, accept that people be condemned only because they express a different opinion” argues Khadija Rouissi, President of Bayt Al Hikma, one of the local NGOs which supported M.A.L.I’s intiative.

“They started the debate, and that’s very positive” adds AMDH President Khadija Ryadi.

On the international level, on September 19^th, Human Rights Watch called on the Moroccan authorities to cancel any charge against M.A.L.I members. A camouflet for a country that has always been boasting about being one of the most advanced democratic Muslim country in the world.

The Internet: Facebook as a facade and forums as ramifications

Facebook has been essential for M.A.L.I.  They were three important phases.

First, the creation of a Facebook group of 13 admins, a couple of clicks, some pictures, a description of the group, and the weapon was ready.

The second phase was impulsed by the creation of an event, the “symbolic picnic”, which made the group grow from 13 people to 200 ones, a sufficient critical mass to spark a small buzz prior to the event.

The third phase is still going on and it is about how the Facebook page beneficiated from the incident post-euphoria. The two groups now have more than 2,500 members. Though this number is incomparable to what we generally witness with NGOs in Western countries, it is still a lot for a country where Internet accessibility, literacy and fear of retaliation are still serious issues.

As for forums[ii], they have been playing a satellite and shelter role. Among them, Bladi has been the most active one.

Recently, In July 2010, the famous American blog Freethought devoted a 2,000-word piece on the story and its consequences.

Speaking in absolute terms, the fact that 13 people stubbornly decided to eat publicly during Ramadan 2009 in Morocco should have remained an insignificant and marginal incident. Yet, owing to the very special modus operandi chosen by the “dissident” movement to make their act go viral and start an unprecedented media buzz going beyong the borders of Morocco, what happened that day should be given the utmost attention and be construed as a major and fundamental change in the way religion and society dynamics are and will be apprehended in Morocco.

Now the Pandora box is open and there’s nothing to do to reverse the tide.

[ii] Forums perfectly illustrate Professors Keck and Sikkink’ arguments (Activist Beyond Borders, 1998)about the power of transnational networks metaphorized by the « boomerang effect »: the idea that a local group can « send » a boomerang (ask for help through the internet for example) to a group acting abroad and have the later inform and put pressure on its own local environment which, the authors believe, will in turn help the foreign group that asked for help in the first place (they « send back » the boomerang).

This somewhat surprising acquiescence by RIM comes in the wake of India’s efforts to ban the devices altogether.  The government began efforts to outlaw BlackBerry smart phones this past summer citing security concerns.   They suspect that the orchestrators of the 2008 terrorist attacks in Mumbai utilized encrypted BlackBerry devices that Indian security agencies were unable to monitor.

RIM likely made the concession to avoid being shut out of what it sees as growing and potentially very profitable market. Informa Telecoms & Media estimates that more than 600,000 BlackBerry devices will be sold in India this year.

But will Indian citizens react like some in the United States did when their mobile privacy is threatened?

Since the Obama administration proposed a bill earlier this year that would make it easier to monitor BlackBerrys, among many other devices, there has been significant public opposition.  Though the bill does not come close to opening all communication to government surveillance, it simply requires them to be what the New York Times defines as “technically capable of complying if served with a wiretap order,” many Americans feel it is a violation of privacy.

It is yet to be seen whether the response in India will be similar.  As the story unfolds, it will be interesting to watch the public’s reaction and whether it has an impact on the government’s decision to monitor communication.

The use of social media and new platforms in the U.S. races really took off during the Presidential election, with Obama being fairly Internet savvy and definitely a Crackberry addict. Other political candidates have since utilized social networking sites and new media outlets for their campaigns.

Tonight, we can keep track of news in specific regions on Twitter, with hashtags such as #nycvotes; we can check out ratings on Facebook; and more.

Of course, there are some flaws. For instance, Foursquare is attempting to track users’ voting (see map).

“Check-In and include #ivoted in your shout out to get your limited edition iVOTED badge.” – Foursquare

It would seem that most people in California and New York vote but not so much between. But the reality is probably plenty of people in between are voting; they just aren’t on Foursquare…or have smart phones…or mobile technology in general…

But nevertheless, it’s a good movement. As tech enthusiast and blogger Mark Chou writes, “I love what Foursquare’s doing here. Using tech to encourage civic engagement? Check. Attractive data visualizations? Check. Next step – using Foursquare data to develop predictions more robust than exit polls!”

Haha, perhaps. Hey, if we can use these sites to predict hurricanes, why not politics. They’re pretty similar anyways.

Basic background: as bloggers stake out their microniches, and advertisers recognize that bloggers have become the influential people within that niche, they can flow the influencer some cash dollars to speak nice about them — or at least recommend them — to their audiences.

The FTC wants Bloggers to reveal the relationship and the spirit to promote transparency is commendable. How practical it is is another story. Here’s what I wrote to a Listserv I belong to:

I’m kind of ambivalent about the whole thing. I think transparency is a best business practice so advocate for it whether legally required or not.

But should it be legally required? Different question and I just don’t know. Our whole media environment is pretty murky.

I’m more concerned with CNN/Fox interviewing retired four-star generals that have undisclosed commercial interests with military contractors than I am a blogger with undisclosed ties to a gadget company.

Since who we are and what we do is only as reliable as our credibility, I think any organization, large or small, would/should sink if they don’t reveal their ties.

That said, here’s an article against the regulations.

As I looked into it, the FTC regulations focus specifically on Bloggers. In its view, Bloggers are different than other media entities (read: big media, or mainstream media) and therefore deserve special regulation (Note to Bloggers: You always wanted to be important, now you are).

Continuing with my Listserv conversation:

What’s a “blogger” anyway?

As the author points out, a blog is only a delivery mechanism, and one that is used by both pajama clad typists and established news organizations. So is it just “independent” media, ie, the lone blogger or three, that needs to disclose?

Since the FTC leaves out traditional media (newspaper, television, magazines, radio, tv), how is it decided who’s included. For example, David Pogue has known interests outside his blog at the NYT. Should the Times be required to run a disclaimer next to all his posts, and if not, why should SomeLittleSite.com have to.

Or, when does the lowly “blog” become a “legitimate” news site that is no longer covered by the regulation.

A trickier nut to crack is that companies have paid people to post positive reviews on product sites. The most well known, recent case being Belkin.

How would the FTC say something like that be handled?

Anyway, or either way, the issues are important. While infinite good information is found on the tubes, so too is infinite bad. Throw shysters into the mix and you can understand the desire to regulate against duplicity. I think though that it has to be all in or none at all.

If Fox/CNN don’t need to reveal commercial and political interests, neither do I.

Not that either is a good thing.